Lindy Jeffery, Executive Director of the National Council on Ageing, tells us about this poster from Belize.
BELMOPAN, Belize (GAA), July 25, 2007: “The poster is depicting the Voice organization which is a new group of older persons in the country. It’s a representative organization for the older person.
It doesn’t necessarily stand for anything but the older people themselves just decided that VOICE was a good name for them because they wanted a voice in society.
They wanted people to take notice of them and so we have the poster printed as part of a public awareness campaign on behalf of the organization.
The National Council on Ageing is supporting them until they get to a situation where they can become an NGO in their own right. But working with older people, they just need a little bit of support for now until they reach that stage.”
Jeffery explains how an international body got hold of the poster. She also explains what such an exposure means for Belize.
“The Global Action on Ageing is a UN organization based in New York and they sent requesting information from me just generally about the work of the National Council on Ageing. I sent them some information. They wanted a questionnaire completed so I replied to them and I sent them a copy of the poster saying that you might be interested in this because this is a new initiative for Belize in establishing a representative organization for older persons.
And then by surprise they liked it and they printed it on the front cover of their newsletter which was great for us to have something representing Belize on a worldwide distribution of a newsletter.
People will see that little Belize is doing something for older persons, that we have come a long way in terms of looking at the plan of action which the government signed up to a few years ago.
We are implementing our national policy which contains a lot of information about what we feel is necessary to make life for older persons better in Belize. So we are working and it means that you know, people around the world now can see that Belize is doing something.”
The National Council on Ageing is funded by the Government of Belize through the Ministry of Human Development.
Copyright © Global Action on Aging, New York
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